(05-05-2021 12:09 AM)Acres Wrote: The CFP charter stipulates that the highest ranked champion from the non contract conference will participate in other bowl games, meaning the NY6 bowls. It is clear that the current format explicitly excludes, non contract conference teams from the CFP playoffs.
This is the reason expansion is guaranteed in next iteration of the CFP in 2026 in order to amend the charter to include a new contract Bowl that includes the highest ranked team from either the AAC, MWC, Sunbelt, etc. A peach bowl or cotton bowl arrangement to take in the highest ranked team from these conferences verses the Big 12 or ACC ( read Notre Dame ) would do the trick.
In another note, the current CFP contract with ESPN was announced in 2012 , two years before it went into effect in 2014. Expect the new deal to be announced in 2023, the current one expires in 2025. I wouldn’t be surprised if negotiations with ESPN has started with earnest. The AAC is the place to be if you are a current non contract conference team.
This post and several of the most recent posts have all been based on three assumptions: That (a) The same criteria used to select a non-P5 NY6 bowl team will be used to select a non-P5 CFB team, (b) there is just going to be one non-P5 team in the expanded CFP, and © it is almost always going to be an AAC team.
These assumptions may be incorrect, for the following reasons:
a)
It would be possible for the powers that be to decide that the top-ranked non-P5 team would receive an automatic bid, rather than the champion of the top-ranked non-P5 conference.
--This would allow the FBS independents such as BYU access, and it would prevent a mediocre non-P5 division champion from getting lucky, winning their conference championship and thus getting an auto-bid.
--It would be just as controversial to prevent the FBS independents from having access as it would be to prevent the G5s from having access.
--Imagine that Army goes 12-0 and is the highest-ranked non-P5 team, (#6 in the CFP). How could anyone argue that they shouldn't receive an invitation to play in an 8-team CFP, simply because they're not in a conference?
--One simple solution would be to treat the FBS independents as if they were a conference, and to set up a procedure by which a "champion" of the FBS independents "conference" would be selected.
NOTE: The group of FBS independents were ranked 4th in the nation in the final 2020 Massey Composite rankings - - ahead of the PAC-12, the ACC, and the AAC.
b) Whether the CFP expands to 8, 12, or 16 teams,
there may be years
when more than one non-P5 team qualifies for an at-large bid.
--For example, in 2020, 3 non-P5 teams ranked highly enough in the CFP rankings to make it into a 16-team playoff, and 2 ranked highly enough to make it into a 12-team playoff.
c)
The AAC was not the top-ranked non-P5 conference in 2020, if the FBS independents were to be considered tantamount to a conference, and the Sun Belt Conference could become the top-ranked non-P5 conference within the next few years.
--This is one of the reasons why it has become such a high priority for the AAC to add an upper-echelon FB program (e.g., Boise St.).
.